Reincarnated as a Mushroom?-Chapter 57 - 56: Blades in the Water, Hunger in the Trees

Chapter 56: Blades in the Water, Hunger in the Trees

I woke in a float of afterglow and half-lidded bliss. Every muscle felt weightless, liquified by the memory of Kimchi’s thighs and the kind of pleasure that left gods jealous and mortals extinct. The cool pool water soothed my skin, still tingling from hours of metaphysical cardio. Naturally, I reached out to caress her hair.

My hand brushed air.

That was... off.

Kimchi usually slept on me like a proprietary house cat with combat training. Groggily, I opened my eyes. No redhead. No sultry sighs. No sleepy purring. Just the dull glisten of post-orgasmic solitude.

She was gone.

"Guess she had shit to do," I mumbled, and sat up—only to feel my palm rest on something unnaturally cold.

I looked down.

Kiya.

The floating sword—my psychic alloyed bestie, my sarcastic murder-stick—was lying beside me, partially under my hand.

"I could’ve sworn I left you in the lab with your rune battery plugged in," I muttered, blinking. "You float. Why the floor?"

The sword, as usual, said nothing, but lifted slowly off the stone with a low psionic hum. A silent reproach. She hovered to my side like a jealous guardian ghost.

"Okay, clingy," I muttered, standing with a stretch and walking waist-deep into the pool. "You want a polish? Some mana oil? Fine. Come get your rubdown."

Kiya floated above my head, the Sword of Damocles incarnate, which—I’ll admit—set off a small alarm bell in my gut.

She trembled in place.

I, being me, assumed it was excitement.

"Well then. Let’s just—"

THWACK.

"AAAAAAH YOU CHITINOUS BASTARD SPAWNED FROM A WHORE’S PLAGUE-RIDDEN BACKDOOR!"

A sharp, hellish pain exploded in my left shoulder, and I nearly dropped Kiya as I staggered back. My hand instinctively reached up—and wrapped around a spike the size of a fuck-you.

Organic, serrated, warm with kinetic aftershock. Buried deep in my shoulder like it paid rent there.

I looked at it.

Recognition was instant.

"Oh fuck me sideways, it’s Onyx."

With a hiss between my teeth, I yanked the spike out. Bad idea in most cases—but one of my lesser-known augments accelerated tissue closure. The wound clotted mid-breath.

Still, blood splashed across my chest like abstract art.

I gave the spike a quick sniff—standard habit. No poison. Which was surprising. Onyx loved poison like cats loved laser pointers and dismemberment.

With a sigh of irritation, I chucked it into the shallows and muttered, "Bitch is escalating. Great."

I sprinted through the water toward the shallows—less drag, more maneuverability—and took up a defensive stance. Kiya hummed to life in my hand.

Then I shut my eyes.

Because if this was really Onyx...

...my vision was about as useful as a chocolate teapot.

Instead, I listened.

The world was deceptively calm. Waterfall to my right. Steady. Cascading. The upper pool’s runoff trickled into the lower with rhythmic pittering. Breeze sighed through bioluminescent fronds.

But underneath all that...

A wrongness.

A heartbeat waiting to strike.

---

Sixty meters away, curled into the hollowed branch of a psionically-grown ironwood, Onyx watched her quarry through cloaked eyes.

She had missed.

The shot had been meant to paralyze his arm, to leave him helpless and panting. Instead, he’d moved. A subtle shift. Enough to minimize the damage and alert him.

He knew.

"Target: Irvine. Codename: Reason to Exist. Current status: Alert. Agitated. Prepared."

Onyx’s logic cortex buzzed with calculations.

Approach through water: compromised.

Target auditory sensitivity: acute.

Desire to pin him to the ground and rut like starving animals: irrational. Unproductive.

Psionic abilities: suppressed.

The null-field surrounding the glade warped her thoughts, slowing her reaction time, dulling her edge. She couldn’t even communicate with the Hive. Couldn’t ping Crystal. Couldn’t hide from herself.

Worst of all?

A thread of her old self—the fractured, emotional Onyx who used to laugh and dance and fuck for the fun of it—was still whispering inside her mind.

"He called us sweetie."

"He smells so good."

"I want him to rip me open with his tongue and then apologize with flowers."

Unacceptable.

Focus.

She adjusted her tail launcher, compressing only two chambers—not enough to explode him, but plenty to maim—and fired again.

---

The air hissed.

Behind me. Forty degrees up. Right quadrant.

My legs were already tense. The moment I heard it, I launched left—ten meters through shallow water, sending a spray of droplets like a ruptured geyser.

The spike struck where I’d been a second before. Had I not moved?

Dead. No question.

And I was still adjusting when the next one came.

I swung Kiya in a sharp, cross-body guard and caught it mid-air. Sparks. Agony. The torque twisted my already injured shoulder. Pain danced like a drunk spider through my nerves.

But I said nothing.

I wouldn’t give her the pleasure.

Instead, I shouted, "Come on, sweetie! Hide and seek’s over. Get your sexy bug ass in the water if you want a real chance!"

No response.

No movement.

Just... a flicker.

---

Onyx trembled.

He’d used it again.

"Sweetie."

The word reverberated in her gut like a psionic tremor. Not from his mind. From his voice. His very flesh was a weapon.

"I want to devour the target. Fully. Bone to blood. Mind to memory," she calculated aloud. "But I also want him to rail me until I forget the structure of time."

She leapt.

---

The bond snapped like a live wire. I felt her—a crackle of proximity.

She was coming fast.

"SHIT."

A thought. A pulse. A snap of psionic current—

A bullet of force appeared above me mid-air, composed of layered kinetic folds and twisted resonance harmonics. It struck something invisible—and suddenly, Onyx existed.

Her cloaked form rippled into being mid-air.

Four meters tall. Sword limbs like obsidian guillotines. Her chest heaving. Eyes wild.

She didn’t slow.

But I moved—backdash.

The blade-arms slashed down and kissed nothing but water.

She landed. I landed.

Silence.

Tension as thick as protein paste.

She stared.

I stared.

I was outmatched in every way.

She was faster. Taller. Stronger. A hybrid apex predator fueled by murder, lust, and repressed feelings she couldn’t name.

And she was holding back.

Not her power.

Just her intent to kill.

That was worse.

Still, I wasn’t going down like a bitch.

I charged.

Kiya danced in my grip, cutting through the air with flares of amethyst and silver. I poured every ounce of technique I had into that flurry—feints, ripostes, even some of the bullshit Kimchi taught me while half-drunk.

Onyx blocked with ease.

But she didn’t counter with her swords.

No.

She pummeled me.

Elbows. Knees. Open-palmed slaps that hit like steel plates. Each strike designed not to break bones—but to hurt. Maximum agony. Minimal damage.

She was toying with me.

And it was working.

---

Unbeknownst to me, the fractured part of Onyx’s mind screamed.

"Don’t hurt him!"

"Hurt him better!"

But her killer instincts surged forward.

This was mating. This was combat. This was how she proved her worth.

And I?

I needed a new strategy.

Because at this rate?

I was losing.

Hard.

Chapter 56: Blades in the Water, Hunger in the Trees

I woke in a float of afterglow and half-lidded bliss. Every muscle felt weightless, liquified by the memory of Kimchi’s thighs and the kind of pleasure that left gods jealous and mortals extinct. The cool pool water soothed my skin, still tingling from hours of metaphysical cardio. Naturally, I reached out to caress her hair.

My hand brushed air.

That was... off.

Kimchi usually slept on me like a proprietary house cat with combat training. Groggily, I opened my eyes. No redhead. No sultry sighs. No sleepy purring. Just the dull glisten of post-orgasmic solitude.

She was gone.

"Guess she had shit to do," I mumbled, and sat up—only to feel my palm rest on something unnaturally cold.

I looked down.

Kiya.

The floating sword—my psychic alloyed bestie, my sarcastic murder-stick—was lying beside me, partially under my hand.

"I could’ve sworn I left you in the lab with your rune battery plugged in," I muttered, blinking. "You float. Why the floor?"

The sword, as usual, said nothing, but lifted slowly off the stone with a low psionic hum. A silent reproach. She hovered to my side like a jealous guardian ghost.

"Okay, clingy," I muttered, standing with a stretch and walking waist-deep into the pool. "You want a polish? Some mana oil? Fine. Come get your rubdown."

Kiya floated above my head, the Sword of Damocles incarnate, which—I’ll admit—set off a small alarm bell in my gut.

She trembled in place.

I, being me, assumed it was excitement.

"Well then. Let’s just—"

THWACK.

"AAAAAAH YOU CHITINOUS BASTARD SPAWNED FROM A WHORE’S PLAGUE-RIDDEN BACKDOOR!"

A sharp, hellish pain exploded in my left shoulder, and I nearly dropped Kiya as I staggered back. My hand instinctively reached up—and wrapped around a spike the size of a fuck-you.

Organic, serrated, warm with kinetic aftershock. Buried deep in my shoulder like it paid rent there.

I looked at it.

Recognition was instant.

"Oh fuck me sideways, it’s Onyx."

With a hiss between my teeth, I yanked the spike out. Bad idea in most cases—but one of my lesser-known augments accelerated tissue closure. The wound clotted mid-breath.

Still, blood splashed across my chest like abstract art.

I gave the spike a quick sniff—standard habit. No poison. Which was surprising. Onyx loved poison like cats loved laser pointers and dismemberment.

With a sigh of irritation, I chucked it into the shallows and muttered, "Bitch is escalating. Great."

I sprinted through the water toward the shallows—less drag, more maneuverability—and took up a defensive stance. Kiya hummed to life in my hand.

Then I shut my eyes.

Because if this was really Onyx...

...my vision was about as useful as a chocolate teapot.

Instead, I listened.

The world was deceptively calm. Waterfall to my right. Steady. Cascading. The upper pool’s runoff trickled into the lower with rhythmic pittering. Breeze sighed through bioluminescent fronds.

But underneath all that...

A wrongness.

A heartbeat waiting to strike.

---

Sixty meters away, curled into the hollowed branch of a psionically-grown ironwood, Onyx watched her quarry through cloaked eyes.

She had missed.

The shot had been meant to paralyze his arm, to leave him helpless and panting. Instead, he’d moved. A subtle shift. Enough to minimize the damage and alert him.

He knew.

"Target: Irvine. Codename: Reason to Exist. Current status: Alert. Agitated. Prepared."

Onyx’s logic cortex buzzed with calculations.

Approach through water: compromised.

Target auditory sensitivity: acute.

Desire to pin him to the ground and rut like starving animals: irrational. Unproductive.

Psionic abilities: suppressed.

The null-field surrounding the glade warped her thoughts, slowing her reaction time, dulling her edge. She couldn’t even communicate with the Hive. Couldn’t ping Crystal. Couldn’t hide from herself.

Worst of all?

A thread of her old self—the fractured, emotional Onyx who used to laugh and dance and fuck for the fun of it—was still whispering inside her mind.

"He called us sweetie."

"He smells so good."

"I want him to rip me open with his tongue and then apologize with flowers."

Unacceptable.

Focus.

She adjusted her tail launcher, compressing only two chambers—not enough to explode him, but plenty to maim—and fired again.

---

The air hissed.

Behind me. Forty degrees up. Right quadrant.

My legs were already tense. The moment I heard it, I launched left—ten meters through shallow water, sending a spray of droplets like a ruptured geyser.

The spike struck where I’d been a second before. Had I not moved?

Dead. No question.

And I was still adjusting when the next one came.

I swung Kiya in a sharp, cross-body guard and caught it mid-air. Sparks. Agony. The torque twisted my already injured shoulder. Pain danced like a drunk spider through my nerves.

But I said nothing.

I wouldn’t give her the pleasure.

Instead, I shouted, "Come on, sweetie! Hide and seek’s over. Get your sexy bug ass in the water if you want a real chance!"

No response.

No movement.

Just... a flicker.

---

Onyx trembled.

He’d used it again.

"Sweetie."

The word reverberated in her gut like a psionic tremor. Not from his mind. From his voice. His very flesh was a weapon.

"I want to devour the target. Fully. Bone to blood. Mind to memory," she calculated aloud. "But I also want him to rail me until I forget the structure of time."

She leapt.

---

The bond snapped like a live wire. I felt her—a crackle of proximity.

She was coming fast.

"SHIT."

A thought. A pulse. A snap of psionic current—

A bullet of force appeared above me mid-air, composed of layered kinetic folds and twisted resonance harmonics. It struck something invisible—and suddenly, Onyx existed.

Her cloaked form rippled into being mid-air.

Four meters tall. Sword limbs like obsidian guillotines. Her chest heaving. Eyes wild.

She didn’t slow.

But I moved—backdash.

The blade-arms slashed down and kissed nothing but water.

She landed. I landed.

Silence.

Tension as thick as protein paste.

She stared.

I stared.

I was outmatched in every way.

She was faster. Taller. Stronger. A hybrid apex predator fueled by murder, lust, and repressed feelings she couldn’t name.

And she was holding back.

Not her power.

Just her intent to kill.

That was worse.

Still, I wasn’t going down like a bitch.

I charged.

Kiya danced in my grip, cutting through the air with flares of amethyst and silver. I poured every ounce of technique I had into that flurry—feints, ripostes, even some of the bullshit Kimchi taught me while half-drunk.

Onyx blocked with ease.

But she didn’t counter with her swords.

No.

She pummeled me.

Elbows. Knees. Open-palmed slaps that hit like steel plates. Each strike designed not to break bones—but to hurt. Maximum agony. Minimal damage.

She was toying with me.

And it was working.

---

Unbeknownst to me, the fractured part of Onyx’s mind screamed.

"Don’t hurt him!"

"Hurt him better!"

But her killer instincts surged forward.

This was mating. This was combat. This was how she proved her worth.

And I?

I needed a new strategy.

Because at this rate?

I was losing.

Hard.

The source of this c𝐨ntent is fre𝒆w(e)bn(o)vel